Weekend Assignment #230: Olympic ceremony

As the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games approached this weekend, Karen asked:

Weekend Assignment #230:
Have you been watching the Olympics? If so, what have you particularly
enjoyed? If not, then what, if anything, would entice you to watch?

Extra Credit: Is there a sport not in the Olympics that ought to be there?

I think this is the first time in several (leap) years
I’ve watched very little of the Olympics on TV, nor have I made much of
an effort to follow the news reports from it (not that it’s required much effort, really).

As far as TV viewing is concerned, I’ve usually found the events in the Winter Games more interesting to watch. Ice skating (not
ice dancing), ski jumping, speed skating, bobsledding – those sports
are just more fun for me. But I’m not that interested in gymnastics,
don’t really enjoy watching people run, and really can’t see much
happening in the swimming matches (due to that whole
bodies-immersed-in-water thing), so the Summer Games are not as
compelling as a spectator event for me.

Even if the sports had more appeal to me, I feel that the way the TV
coverage is done detracts from the games themselves. I don’t really
enjoy the “USA vs. the world” angle; isn’t it “every country in the
world vs. each other,” really? The soft-focus human-interest stories
about the favored athletes have become joke fodder rather than
interesting background. There’s also the manufactured drama of saving
certain events for prime-time evening viewing when the results have
already been all over the news. And by the end of the Games, I had lost
patience with reporters saying that an athlete had “settled for a
silver (medal).” Granted, maybe that does feel like “settling” in our everything-or-nothing, winning-is-everything culture, but a silver means you’re second best in the entire world. Why is that a bad thing?

However, my lack of involvement in this year’s Olympics surprised me a little, because I’ve been to the Olympics – the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, in 1996. After that, I thought I would be an Olympics fan for life.

We were living a day’s drive from Atlanta at the time, and we had
family there we could stay with. We also had a good friend from Los
Angeles who had been at the 1984 Games there, and he swore that they
were a don’t-miss opportunity; he was planning to come across the
country to Atlanta so that he could actually have this
once-in-a-lifetime experience twice. We spent four days at the Games
during their first week, and attended four indoor-volleyball matches
and one water-polo match. First Husband picked the events, and he’s a
volleyball fan. (His second wife is an ex-volleyball player, as a
matter of trivia…) It was a good choice of sport, though – the venue
was small enough to have a good view of the action, and it was more fun
to watch in person than it would have been on TV.

Earlier that same year, we had the chance to see the US Olympic
baseball team in one of their exhibition games; their training facility
was located just north of Memphis, and since we wouldn’t be seeing them
play in Atlanta, we wanted to take advantage of the chance to see them
locally. Baseball and softball will both be off the roster for the 2012
Games, as Karen mentioned in her response to this Assignment, and I
agree with her that this is a disappointment (I’ve heard they could be
back in 2016, though). There have been long-fought campaigns to make
ballroom dancing and contract bridge Olympic sports (yes, I’m serious
about bridge; I used to work for an organization that was lobbying for
its inclusion, among its other activities), but I don’t really think
either belongs there. A few weeks ago, my husband made a strong case
for some additions to the Games, particularly Mario Kart for the Nintendo Wii, miniature golf, and cat bathing.

Did you have Olympic fever this year, or did it pass you by?

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I hadn’t expected to be bitten by the Olympic Fever bug this year, but I was. I was glued to my TV every night, catching up on what I’d missed during the day. I prefer the Summer Olympics to the Winter–probably in part becaue I am not a cold sport fan. I’ve always lived in warm climate areas. And the summer sports appeal to me more because they are familiar to me, some I have played before myself.

I think golf would be a good addition to the Olympics. Not that I would watch. I’m not particularly a fan of the sport, but it is played around the world. I think I’d heard that it was once included, but I could be wrong about that.

Someone interviewed on TV suggested skatboarding be added on. It was interesting watching the BMX competitions this year. I think my husband most enjoyed those–second to Women’s Beach Volleyball, that is. 😉

Mike – Bobsled crashes and ski-jump tumbles. Hey, what could be better :-)? And yes, someone really needs to explain the deal with curling. Stickball on skates, or what?

Literary Feline – If snowboarding is in the Winter Games, why not add skateboarding to the Summer ones? Give them some of that X-Games flavor. And I’ve actually enjoyed watching beach volleyball in person in the South Bay (Manhattan and Hermosa Beaches) – not specifically the women’s game, though…

As I said, I’m still a bit surprised at myself for not getting into it much this year.

I got caught up in the Michael Phelps drama and loved it!! Otherwise, I missed many of the events I would normally watch — diving, gymnastics. But I agree — I heard an announcer the other day talking about the disappointing finish when an athlete received a bronze medal. crazy.